Just two murders a week in the Netherlands in 2016

With just two days to go before the end of the year, the number of murders committed in the Netherlands in 2016 is set to reach a 43-year low, the AD said on Friday.

So far this year, there have been 108 murders. ‘We have to go back to 1973 to find a lower number, and then there were far fewer people in the Netherlands and less international criminality,’ said Eric Slot of Moordatlas.nl, which monitors the murder rate.

Amsterdam is once again the murder capital of the Netherlands, with 22 violent deaths, many of which were gang-related. Nevertheless, the long-term trend in Amsterdam is still going down, the AD said.

West-Brabant, which had most murders last year, has gone down in the rankings. Five of the nine murders in the region were also drug gang related, the AD said. In Rotterdam there were eight murders and in The Hague, just four.

Most murders (34%) took place within families and there were no sex-related murders at all.

This year, the only fight between neighbours which led to a murder took place in Dokkum, where an 82-year-old man deliberately ran over the 80-year-old man next door, the AD said.